Virgin Mobile to hike prices by up to £107 a year for 250,000 customers
A QUARTER of a million Virgin Mobile customers will see their prices hiked by more than £100 a year in come cases.
From their April bill onwards, around 250,000 Virgin Mobile pay monthly and Sim-only users will see price rises.
These are not inflation linked increases, which is what we've seen announced by EE, O2, and Three Mobile in recent weeks.
Instead, these come amid a shakeup by Virgin Mobile of "old tariffs".
Virgin Mobile couldn't given us an average increase but we've seen customers on social media complaining about bills rising by a whopping £8.87 a month - or nearly £107 a year.
One user tweeted: "Virgin wants to increase my mobile line rental by £8.87 per month from £4.13 to £13.00... 15 months into a 36 month contract!!!"
Another said: "Virgin Mobile changing my £4.13pm contract (6GB data, unltd texts, 1500 mins) to £13pm (5GB, unltd texts 2500 mins)... It’s disgusting!!"
Someone else wrote: "Virgin Mobile changing my £4.13pm contract (6GB data, unltd texts, 1500 mins) to £13pm (5GB data, unltd texts, 2500 mins). Can they do this?"
Virgin Mobile says affected users will be contacted about the hikes by letter or email.
But affected customers are allowed to alter or cancel their contracts penalty free, as long as they do so by March 31.
It's worth bearing in mind that Virgin Media is likely to up prices again this year in line with inflation.
The provider wouldn't confirm to us how it will calculate increases this year, but last year Virgin Mobile upped prices by 3.3 per cent in line with March's retail prices index (RPI) measure of inflation.
A Virgin Media spokesperson said: “We want our customers to enjoy our latest and greatest mobile plans so we’re removing some old tariffs and making a limited number of price adjustments for a small number of customers.
"Any changes made will be communicated clearly to our customers.”
Virgin Mobile has 3.1million customers in total. Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) customers are unaffected.
The group's parent company, Virgin Media, hiked bills for millions of broadband, TV and home phone customers by 4.5 per cent last autumn.
Sky is also hiking prices for millions of customers by £42 this year.
But we've put together a guide on how to avoid Sky's price rises – and you could save HUNDREDS of pounds.
Plus, we've put together three steps to avoid the EE, Three Mobile and Vodafone price rises.
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